LORD LOREBURN'S LETTER.
[To TEE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR...I
SIR,—In the first paragraph of the Spectator of September 13th it is stated that " Lord Loreburn appeals for a Conference to settle the Irish question with the consent of all parties." This brings to my mind what the late Sir Henry Campbell- Bannerman said to me in the Parliamentary recess immediately preceding the introduction of the first Home Rule Bill by Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Campbell-Bannerman, as be then was, was going the round of the five burghs which formed his constituency. He had come to the smallest of them, and I had been invited to meet him at dinner in— Abbey. When the lathes had left the dining-room I ventured to say across
the table, " What are you going to do with Ireland, Mr. Campbell-Bannerman " After a moment's pause be replied, with his own kind and sagacious look, " The only way to deal with Ireland is for the best heads of both parties to be brought together, that they may agree on a common policy." Everyone knows how, although Mr. Gladstone's Bill at first gave him anxious concern, Mr. Campbell-Bannerman afterwards "found salvation," as he expressed it. His first thought on this important matter seems to have been his best thought, and now after the long interval of twenty-eight years it is re- echoed by the Lord Chancellor of his own nomination.—I am,
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